Train Wreck Girl

by Sean Carswell

  It’s one thing when you have regrets. Life is full of them. It’s another thing when you have regrets in the middle of doing what you’re regretting. You think, I could stop this. Right now I could. Just stop it.

  But I didn’t. I kept walking to the bus station. It really was important to me to get back to Florida. Because, to be honest, there was so much more than my impending thirtieth birthday that was driving me. There was so much more than just getting too old to die young. There was my brother Joe back in Florida. And Sophie who stabbed me. And Helen. And my brother Joe. And, already, though I was in Flagstaff, walking along train tracks and forgetting about trains and lighted by a glowing, snow-peaked mountain, my head was in Florida. I was so deep in my head that I didn’t see anything on the train tracks until I tripped over it.

  I fell between the tracks on the other side of whatever tripped me. My knees scraped the rocks and the pads of my hands thudded against a railroad tie. First, I brushed myself off. No tear on my jeans. That was a plus. A little something spread across the toe of my boot. I reached down to wipe it away. It was a spatter of blood. I checked myself again. No blood. I had only tripped. Nothing big. So I looked at what I’d tripped over. This lump like a side of beef. But a side of beef between railroad tracks made no sense. I looked closer. It was a torso. Oh shit. My first thought was of Tucson Johnny, this homeless guy who came into the Corner Bar now and then. He never tipped but at least he always paid for his drinks. I liked Tucson Johnny. At least, I liked him enough to not want to see him dead on the train tracks. So I took a closer look, thinking, maybe it’s not him. Probably it’s not him. I don’t even know why I think it is.

  A lot of the parts beyond the torso were missing. The head. One leg—the right one, I think. A hand. Everything else was hard to identify since the skin was mostly torn off and the rest of the body unraveled with it. Obviously, several trains had hit it over the course of the night. Bits and pieces were strewn about the tracks for thirty yards. The smell slapped my nose—metallic and a little sweet—and I nearly threw up on the spot. Vomit raced up from my stomach. I felt it coming and did what I could to catch it. A little spilled into my mouth. I choked it all down. The bile burned the back of my throat. My stomach quivered. Little beads of icy sweat crept out of my pores. I took three long, deep breaths. The cold morning air pushed through the pipe where I’d nearly lost my breakfast. After those three breaths, I was still shaken but ready to move.

  I started walking. What else could I do? I didn’t want to stand and stare. I didn’t want to puke on this corpse. If I looked at it again, I surely would. I definitely didn’t want to get so lost in thought that I’d ignore a train whistle and meet the same fate. And I couldn’t keep thinking the corpse was really a homeless guy I knew. That was just a weird bit of denial. A grotesque little daydream that let me star in my own tragedy without actually being affected by a real tragedy. So, I decided, if I was going to be in denial, why not go whole hog? Why not just deny everything? I walked along and tried not to think. Body parts. Torn jeans. What looked like a pink blanket. A striped knee sock. My stomach trembled with every new discovery. I took deep breaths, tried to exhale my thoughts. I kept sweating through the twenty-degree morning. And then I found the leg.

  It was about ten feet off the tracks, down a little hill, leaning up against the fence. I don’t know why I climbed down to look at it. But then again, I do know why I did. The top of the leg was crushed. Tenuous. Kinda crusty. The rest of it was freckled and bare. And right there, just above the ankle danced Betty Boop. Blood clotted along her outline. Her skirt was in a permanent swing. One eye was too big. The smile was lopsided, like she was crazy. Glaring at me. Full of hate. Saying, “This is all your fault, fucker.”

  I freaked out. It was all so clear now. And I agreed. It probably was my fault. Fucker.

  Vomit raced back up in my mouth. I caught it there and put my hand over my lips so that none could escape. With a great force of will, I choked it down again. That just made me feel worse.

  I started running as fast as I could along the train tracks, holding everything in. I didn’t stop running until I got to the bus station. My Greyhound was fifteen minutes away from leaving. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t do anything except show the driver my ticket and settle into a window seat. Filling myself with regret while it was still early enough to change things.

  6

  Two Days on the Dog

  You freaked out. That’s okay. People will judge you for this. That’s okay, too. If they’ve never found the destroyed carcass of their girlfriend on the train tracks, then they have no right to judge you.

  You’re calling her your girlfriend again, even though she was your ex-girlfriend for the last twenty-four hours of her life. But calling her your girlfriend makes things easier. It’s easier to deal with the death of a girlfriend than to deal with the death of a girl who, less than two days ago, you decided you had to leave and immediately questioned the decision and rocked back and forth on it and convinced yourself that it was for the better and for her own good. It’s too hard for your heart to delineate, to make the distinction between wanting to break up with the girl yet still wanting things to turn out well for her, turn out better than if she were with you. It’s all too confusing. Call her your girlfriend. Keep things as simple as possible.

  You board the Greyhound. Hop the dog. And ride out of Flagstaff before the sun is up. The sunrise comes when you get about an hour east, with the mountains already at your back. Every second of that first hour, you want to get off this dog. Stop the bus. Go back. Tell someone that Libra is dead on the tracks. But you don’t do anything.

  When the sun comes up, you start to wonder who will find the body. Surely, one of the train conductors called it in. It couldn’t have been the one who hit her. If he’d called the cops, the cops would’ve gotten there before you did. But surely some conductor would notice the body. Especially now that the sun was up. Someone would call the cops. They’d figure it out. They don’t need you. At least that’s what you tell yourself.

  And then you think: she’s dead. She’s really fucking dead. Dead. You’ll never see her again. You’ll never get a second chance with her. She’ll never get a second chance at anything ever. She has been robbed of life. She’s dead.

  The bus stops at a weird little desert travel plaza. An old television show had been filmed there. F-Troop. You’ve never seen F-Troop. You’ve only read the sign that’s posted in front of the convenience store. You grab a soda and walk around back and stare at long shadows peeling off of cacti.

  Something about the shadows makes you remember that monkey under the Galaxie. It’s almost enough to make you turn around. You can’t see your brother Joe without the monkey. You wonder what to do, but before you can come up with a plan, an old, skinny dude comes up from behind you. He wants to smoke a joint and offers you some. You accept. This is your second mistake.

  You have the sour taste of pot and stomach bile in your mouth. You mix this with an orange soda you’d picked up at the F-Troop stop. It doesn’t help. You keep thinking, she’s dead. She’s really dead. The image of the corpse haunts you. You memorize every detail. And now you go back to the Greyhound john. Now, you finally lose your breakfast.

  As the bus rolls along, the weed makes you more paranoid. You stare out the window and think about how things look back in Flagstaff. They look bad. Your girlfriend’s dead—died a violent death—and you immediately skipped town. The trailer you shared with her is in shambles. Things have been thrown through windows. Furniture is broken. Things got so bad that the last person to visit was a family member who had to pull his sister out of a bad scene. And then you split. On a bus. And you’d bought the ticket three weeks in advance. Things don’t look good. Things look like manslaughter. When you consider the advance ticket, though, things get bumped up to first degree pushing a woman into a train.

  Your mind spins in circles. The same few thoughts rotate around and around. All of them about
Libra and monkeys and dead people. Ritalin and Vicadin help a little. Not enough. And you still have forty-seven hours left on this bus.

  You try to pull it together. Have conversations with people who sit near you. But hardly anyone sits near you. It makes sense. You’ve seen your reflection this morning. You wouldn’t sit next to a guy who looked like that.

  A Zuni kid boards the bus in Gallup, New Mexico. He’s nuts enough to sit with you. He tries to tell you about silver and turquoise jewelry. He’s a jewelry maker. He’s so cheerful and anxious to talk that it breaks your heart. You try to listen, but behind him, through the other window, a train goes by and you think about Native Americans and trains and your lost girlfriend. It takes everything inside you to keep from crying. The best you can do is stare off into space like a zombie. The Zuni kid gets sick of talking to your blank stare. You tell him, “It’s those trains. They’re killing us all.”

  The Zuni kid leaves the bus in Albuquerque, and no one sits by you again until south of Amarillo.

  The only rest you get that first night is from Dallas to San Antonio. A huge woman sits next to you. She weighs an easy three hundred and twenty pounds. You’re pinned between her bulk and the side of the bus. So helpless and stuck that you finally relax. Let yourself sleep.

  Things feel a little better in the morning. You’ve washed your face and hands and armpits in a bus station sink. You’ve brushed your teeth and put on deodorant and changed your shirt. It helps. You’re not so paranoid, not so shaken. Time is starting to heal things in the slightest little bit. You’re still stuck on thoughts of Libra and everything she’s going to miss in life. The words she’s dead still explode in your mind periodically. But at least now it’s not the only think you think about. You can even get out of your head enough to focus on a little drama unfolding on the bus.

  A young father and his infant daughter are sitting two rows in front of you. They’ve made friends with a young mother and her toddler son. Most people on the bus probably assume they’re a family. You know better. They’re all getting along too well: telling stories and playing games and laughing on a Greyhound. Besides, you saw the mother board the bus in Austin, and the father had been riding the dog since Dallas. They make for good eavesdropping, so you eavesdrop. This is what you find out.

  Her baby’s daddy was never much of a factor. She was raising her son and doing well until she lost her job and unemployment ran out and now she’s got to go back to Mobile, Alabama and stay with her mom for a while. He’s just dropping his daughter off with his daughter’s momma. His baby’s momma gets custody for the summer. She lives in Panama City, Florida. He raises their daughter during the school year. The infant, of course, is not in school. This is just the arrangement they made because he’d gone to college and he seemed the more likely parent to prepare their daughter for that.

  You’re getting wrapped up in this drama. It helps you forget. You have a book on your lap, but you only pretend to read. You mostly listen to the stories of this happy, fleeting family.

  Around Houston, they move seats so that the kids sit together and the parents sit together. The toddler son is surprisingly nurturing. He plays games with the infant. He holds her close while she sleeps. The parents keep a close eye, but they keep talking.

  By Lafayette, Lousiana, things are getting a little desperate for the happy, fleeting family. They’ll only be together until Mobile. They’re talking about how bad it sucks that they met like this and live so far apart. They don’t use the word “star-crossed,” but you kinda want to teach it to them.

  In Baton Rouge, they make a strange move. They talk to you. They say, “Do you have any experience with children?”

  This stuns you. You have no idea why they’re talking to you about this. The best you can figure, it’s because you’re the only guy on the bus who’s white and looks like he’s been employed in the past six months. “Not really,” you say. “I was one, once. That’s about all the experience I got.”

  The parents ask you if perhaps you could watch their children for an hour or so at the next bus stop. It seems like a horrible parenting move on their part, but what the hell do you know about being a parent or even about making good moves? You agree to do it. Why not? You’re a safe guy. You can take care of two kids.

  In New Orleans, they put their plan into action. They take a cab to the nearest motel. You stay at the bus station with the kids. You hold the infant on your lap. She’s mostly in and out of sleep. The mother left you some crayons and paper. You draw a picture for the toddler, and he colors it in. He’s a quiet kid. Kinda lost. So focused on coloring in that picture that he makes you recognize yourself in him. You know what it’s like to be the extra baggage your family has to carry around. You know what it’s like to live through a childhood of third-wheel status. You know how to keep your mouth shut, stay out of the way, entertain yourself, acknowledge when you have no control over the situation and just wait it out.

  You start to feel so bad for this kid, or maybe for the kid inside yourself, that you want to do something or say something to indicate to him that he’ll be all right, that everything will be all right. Then you remember who you are and what your life has been up to this point, and you know you’d just be lying to the kid. So you do the next best thing. You buy a slice of banana cream pie from the lunch counter that’s ten feet away from the table. It’s tough negotiating your wallet and the pie with this sleeping little girl in your arm, but you manage. You give the kid the pie. He’s stoked. So stoked it’s a little depressing because you know this kid needs a whole lot more than a slice of pie.

  Ah, fuck it, you think. It’s better than nothing.

  While the kid eats, you look at the little girl. So vulnerable and trusting and a little abandoned. You try to imagine that she’s Libra. But no. It doesn’t work. Not in a bus station. Not left alone by her mother. Not in hand-me-down clothes. Not poor. Not doomed out of the womb. Not Libra. Still, you look at this baby girl and think about Libra and you realize that someone’s gonna be coming after you before too long. People can accept it when kids like these two are lost. People can accept it if you die before your time. But pretty, rich, white girls? They don’t stay dead for long before everyone starts looking for someone to blame. You can’t forget that.

  In Mobile, the parents break off. The mother leaves the bus. She hangs out in the bus station until the bus is leaving again. As you pull out of the station, you see the father holding his daughter up to the window. The daughter is waving. The mother and son stand outside the bus, waving back, crying. You watch for a few seconds and go back to looking at your book and thinking, I can’t believe she’s fucking dead.

  The father leaves the bus in Panama City. You still have another night and morning left on your trip. You do your best to sleep. The bus empties out in Tallahassee, and you can stretch across two seats. But you’re a few inches over six feet tall and on the border of your thirtieth birthday. There’s no real stretching out or deep sleeping for you on these little seats. You nod off until the cramps or nightmares wake you up, switch positions, nod off again, repeat.

  You get off the bus in Titusville, Florida. It was the longest two days of your life. You walk out of the station and into the warm January sun. Ocean breezes aren’t far off. It would seem like things would get better, but you’re still Danny McGregor. You’re still facing a horizon full of crazy broads and dead people.

  7

  Forget the Car, Remember the Spare Tire

  Well, it’s true I’d left things badly in Flagstaff. But now I was in Florida and that was my new problem. I hadn’t been back to Florida in four years. Not since Sophie stabbed me. And, on the whole, I hadn’t left things much better in Florida than I had in Flagstaff.

  The only person from home I’d kept in touch with during my four years away was my brother Joe. I knew he wasn’t around when the dog parked in Titusville, so I tried the next best thing: my sister Janie.

  I dropped a quarter and a dime in a pay
phone and dialed her number. She picked up on the third ring. I said, “Sister Janie, this is Brother Danny.” Not that she was a nun and I was deacon or anything like that. I just got into the habit of calling her sister and myself brother because, if I didn’t, Janie would always say, “Danny who?” And that kinda hurt my feelings.

  “Knucklehead,” Janie said, because that’s what she always called me. “So you are alive.”

  “Alive and stranded at the Greyhound station in Titusville.”

  “And I suppose you want me to pick you up.”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  Janie sighed and let the line fill up with silence until I fully understood how much this was putting her out. Finally, she said, “I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

  Which was Janie’s way of fucking with me. I knew this. Janie’s a big believer in justice or karma or whatever. If the universe didn’t mete it out, she’d do it herself. We both knew good and goddamn well that there was no reason for her to take a couple of hours to drive the twenty-five minutes to the bus station. It was seven in the morning. Unless things had changed drastically since last I heard—which they hadn’t—she still didn’t have a job to go to or kids to take care of. How busy could she be? So I bluffed. I said, “No sweat. I can take a cab. Will you be around?”

  “Forget it,” she said. “I’m leaving right now.”

  Janie saw me before I saw her. I was leaning up against the wall of the Greyhound station, reading the last chapter of an old crime novel. She pulled up in her big-ass Land Rover. She rolled down the window and hollered, “Daaaammmn.” Long and slow. And then: “Who ate my brother Danny?”

  Because, yeah, I’d gained about twenty or twenty-five pounds in the past four years. It was all that free beer at The Corner Bar. Plus, we served hot dogs there. Beer and hot dogs. Libra called it my Babe Ruth diet. It worked exactly how you’d expect it to.